H. G. Wells is largely considered the mother of science-fiction – or, if you insist on the official version of history, the father of science-fiction along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback – with defining novels about alien invasion, time travel and fantastical advances of science. For that, we at In Ear will be eternally grateful, because science-fiction is one of our favourite genres to read, watch, listen to and publish.
We are not the only ones to feel this excitement. The genre is currently being rediscovered by Hollywood and authors alike with a post-apocalyptic twist, and we could not be more excited about this. We have long been fascinated by the complexities and the worlds built by scifi authors, be it on television, in movies or in books, and, of course, in audio dramas. Science-fiction has always been at its best when it is a reflection of current times, or sometimes even anticipates current events decades in advance, such as Section 31 shown on Star Trek: Deep Space 9 in the early 1990s, as a perfect metaphor for the NSA and its PRISM program. It can offer unconventional solutions for problems we are facing today or illustrate problems we weren’t yet aware we might encounter, all while science is constantly playing catch-up up with imagination. This is also in the spirit of Isaac Asimov, who is quoted by everyone’s favourite fake-Teal’c Douglas Anders as having said that “science-fiction is an existential metaphor that allows us to tell stories about the human condition. Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinded critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all.”
Of course, Star Trek, Star Wars, Blade Runner and the like are well-known, but there are also the more light-hearted takes, such as the audio dramas Undone, about a girl getting lost in various alternate realities of London, written by Ben Moor, the comedy in space My First Planet, written by Phil Whelans, or the slightly older and more mysterious Earthsearch, written by James Follett. The fascination with science-fiction audiobooks and audio dramas is nothing new: the aforementioned H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds was adapted by Orson Welles in 1938 and broadcast on radio as a Halloween special – so realistically that some listeners thought it was the news. They are not simply an English-language phenomenon either, with creations such as the German Raumstation Alpha-Base (‘Space-station Alpha Base’) being so high-profile that it is voiced entirely by the actors who dubbed the crew on Star Trek: Voyager.
“It was… a new age. It was the end of history. It was the year everything changed. The year is 2013. The place, Gloucestershire.” – Mark Chatterley, The One In Charge*
Not everyone is a fan of the current dark take on science-fiction. Neal Stephenson, author of iconic Snow Crash “fears that no one will be inspired to build the next great space vessel or find a way to completely end dependence on fossil fuels when our stories about the future promise a shattered world”. While we consider a darker sci-fi a good means of holding up a mirror to the struggles of the early 21st century, we do wholeheartedly agree with Leonard Nimoy, who observed a few years ago that the most important thing in science-fiction isn’t explosions or space battles but “story, story, story, story, story… We have great technology in our industry and that technology can be overused at the expense of story, and that’s a problem for me.”
Our potential to imagine futures beyond being a mere Type 0 civilization is truly amazing, and if you are a (self-)published science-fiction writer who has been doing just that we would love to hear from you. Whether your world is darker than Z’ha’dum, your characters’ morals as ambiguous as those of Takeshi Kovacs, your robot as paranoid as Marvin, or life on your spaceship as creepy as on the Raven: we want to hear from you. Email us your story (up to 2,600 words) for consideration for our upcoming sci-fi anthology. You may submit already published stories, but you must hold the audio rights. What are you waiting for? Allons-y before all these wonderful stories get lost like tears in rain.
* This may not be an actual quote by Mark Chatterley.
